


Inevitability

by Squidbitch



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Dissociation, Domestic Violence, Drug Use, Flashbacks, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Other, Vomiting, mostly though juno feels really numb, this is gonna be a Collection of tags huh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-29
Updated: 2020-11-29
Packaged: 2021-03-09 18:40:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,281
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27780901
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Squidbitch/pseuds/Squidbitch
Summary: Juno is alone in his apartment. There’s a vase broken, shattered on the floor.
Relationships: Diamond/Juno Steel
Comments: 11
Kudos: 52





	Inevitability

**Author's Note:**

> trigger warnings for!  
> domestic violence (this includes hitting hard enough to break someone's bones)  
> rape, and the after math of that  
> non-consensual touching  
> emeto  
> general cycle of abuse  
> manipulation  
> suicidal thoughts  
> alcoholism  
> drug use  
> child abuse  
> death (benzaiten is mentioned pretty briefly)  
> if i've missed anything let me know!

Juno is alone in his apartment. There’s a vase broken, shattered on the floor. 

He can hear seconds pass on the digital clock built into the stove. Red numbers spread across, like a countdown to repetition. Again, again, again. 

Diamond left out the door some time ago. They’d just had a fight. Not as big a one as it could have been, but definitely not one of their small ones. Juno is on the floor now, and he doesn’t know how long he’s been sitting here. 

Truthfully, Juno is glad that it’s like this. He anticipates the fights. For a day, maybe two, even a week if he’s especially lucky, Diamond will be loving and soft with him. Flowers that aren’t scattered across the ground-- 

_ She pushes him back against the table, somewhere far away he hears breaking glass. Feels nothing except a distant mourning for the flowers she got him a day or two ago. That’s all he has time for before he sees the flash of her ring on her finger. _

\--these ones aren’t salvageable, it seems, but there will be new ones anyways. They were starting to get old, needed replacing anyways. Juno knows she’s just trying to win back his favor, though not like Sarah, never like her. Ma would always try to buy back his affection. Those are an apology. That’s completely different from Sarah, and Juno is an asshole for thinking otherwise. Diamond doesn’t deserve that. 

She will come back to the apartment after she’s cooled off, they’ll get through the aftermath no matter how horrible. Juno just has to be agreeable. Then she will apologize, tell him she was at fault too; it was only his fault, and he knows that. He knows that he deserves everything that has been done to him, by her and otherwise, plus very much more. There has not been a moment in Juno’s life where he did not deserve to be punched in the face, at the very least. Some people get what they deserve. Some don’t. 

Some people get much worse than they deserve. Benzaiten Steel was murdered, and there was only one murderer convicted. Juno was the other. Lying by omission is still a lie. Hurting someone indirectly is still hurting. Benten never deserved this to be hurt like that. There was none of that evil underlying in him. Juno got it all passed onto him from the day he was born. 

Sometimes, Juno thinks he was never meant to be alive at all. 

He sits up, or tries to. A sharp pain stabs through his rib and--

_ Her hand grabs him where his side starts to dip into his waist. Juno is small, it’s easy for her to hold him there and squeeze so hard he scrabbles at her arm to get free. It doesn’t work, and gives up easily. Immediately, another punch up towards his chest, close to where she’s holding him. She takes a while to stop after she’s started. He has to grip onto her shoulder so he doesn’t fall over. Part of him wants to apologize for that, for holding onto her when she already helps him out so often.  _

\--Juno winces involuntarily. He takes a moment, and then a few more moments in getting up. He should probably clean up the glass and blood before he cleans himself up. All his own bleeding has long since stopped, and he can’t even feel it right now. 

It’s a little harder than usual to maneuver, and get everything cleaned up, what with the pain in his ribs. He wonders if they’re broken. He wonders if Diamond will be even nicer to him because of that. She usually only breaks his nose, and once popped his arm out of place, but nothing broken like this. If she breaks something else, something worse, maybe she’ll be even nicer. The times he’s gotten stitches because of it, she’s always just told him to cover it up, seemed upset by them but not in a guilty way. They just made Juno feel self conscious. Maybe this kind will be different since something broken like this doesn’t show up like that. 

It’s been so long since they’ve had a nice dinner at home together. He hopes that if she feels bad enough, they’ll be able to. He could make something for the two of them. 

Juno takes a lot too many painkillers, and one of the bottles of vodka they have in the cabinet. He has to move a chair to get to that cabinet, normally he just asks Diamond to get it for him since he can’t reach. That itself has sparked a few arguments. 

He grabs a paper towel, drops a few drops of water onto it, and cleans up the blood under his nose. 

_ When she hits him it’s in the face again, so hard he can hear the cartilage in his nose crack again. Immediately, blood starts to fall. It drips quickly onto the floor, but he catches the rest in his hands. He doesn’t want to make too much of a mess. She rubs under one of his eyes a little too roughly, her hand digs into his cheek. He didn’t even notice he was crying. “Sorry,” she says, as if she has anything to be sorry about. “I just wish you wouldn’t stay so late at the police department. It keeps making me worried that you’re fucking someone there.” She sighs, and dusts herself off. “And you always get so bitchy, I wish you would at least try to be nice.” He  _ does  _ get pretty mean. He’s been like that forever. She wouldn’t get so mad if he only tried to be nicer.  _

_ Juno can’t say anything but, “I understand. I’m sorry.” Even that he can hardly get out.  _

_ She scrunches up her face like that just makes her angrier, and all Juno feels is guilt. “Christ, you can’t even give me a proper fucking apology.” She starts to stalk towards the door. “I’m getting a drink. I need to get out of this fucking apartment.” _

It’s mostly dried up. He realizes that he doesn’t know how long it took for him to get up off the floor after she left. Sometimes afterwards, or after they fuck, times passes so quickly for him. It gets a bit strange, feels like he’s somewhere else. 

Juno sits on the couch, drinks his vodka, and waits for the painkillers to kick in. He thinks about everything that needs to happen. They have rent coming up soon. Wedding is in a few months, still haven’t even bought his dress yet. He should probably change his shirt, there’s still some blood on it. 

\--

The next morning Juno wakes up in their bed. Diamond had come home late last night. Juno’s a bit thankful for that, still had ample time to get high before she came home, and he had to deal with picking up the pieces. They didn't talk a lot, but she feels better. That's what matters. 

Right now, she's just now waking up, sitting up easily in bed, and putting a cigarette in her mouth. She sees that he's awake, and offers him one. “Thanks, Di.” 

After that, Juno figures he would probably brush his teeth, put some makeup on the bruises. Get ready for work. So that’s what he starts to do. Everything always feels a little fuzzy after nights like that, the morning after. His body still feels raw from last night,--

_ He gets lost in the scrubbing, over and over again, but there’s something on his skin. It shouldn’t matter too much, really. Juno hasn’t felt clean for as long as he can remember. Still, he can feel the phantom of her hands more clearly than usual right now. Blood starts to turn the water a pinker color. It’s a nice pink, though Juno isn’t very partial or impartial to the color. It’s better to focus on that, than the wave over wave of nausea that rolls over him. There is no reason for him to feel nauseous at the feeling of her hands. They’ve known each other for so long, and he’s let people do worse stuff to him after knowing them less time. The feeling is irrelevant, is the point.  _

\-- more scraped up now. There’s a feeling just under his eyes after he cries, that same raw feeling. He thinks maybe he cried enough for the feeling to spread. 

He looks at himself briefly in the mirror. He doesn’t look very different, in all honesty. Since Juno was a kid he’s been bruised and battered, this is no different. He guesses he would have looked more like Benten if he had less scars and less bruises. Sometimes he can see both Sarah and Benten in his face. Even though they were twins, the similarities between him and Benten never quite seems as prominent as his and Sarah’s do. 

Moreso when he looks at his body. Sarah Steel had a thin frame from abusing her body almost as much as her kids. Juno has that same thin frame as her from the same damn thing. He can count his ribs easily. Naturally he’s more filled out than this, even when he lived in Oldtown and sometimes food was scarce, Juno would still have more weight on him than this. It feels like when he looks at himself he sees someone dying. 

But Diamond likes him like this. She’s said before that she loves having a partner she can pick up easily.

_ Hands too strong picking him up and throwing him down onto the sofa so easily he feels like a ragdoll. “Di, stop-I can’t-” Automatic reaction. Feels more knee-jerk than pleading. She has never listened to him before. It doesn’t matter too much. Juno’s never had anything worthwhile to say anyways.  _

There’s no point in trying to gain weight. He’ll just lose it all again anyways. Speaking of which, he looks in the bathroom cabinet for something to take. He finds little yellow pills in a pill bottle. He looks them over. 

“Hey, Di,” He calls from the bathroom, leaning against the door. She’s still sitting on the bed. “Are these mine or yours?”

She glances at them. “You can have some.” 

That might devolve into another argument later, but so might so many other things. Juno just nods and walks back into the bathroom. He throws some of them into his mouth, swallows them, and then starts to brush his teeth. The sound of that in his mouth is a little too much to hear Diamonds steps, but he sees her in the mirror. 

He spits out toothpaste, and rinses his mouth out while she starts to run a brush through her hair. When they’re both done with their respective tasks, Juno opens the drawer, and starts getting out his makeup to cover up marks. Rita would annoy the hell out of him if she noticed anything amiss. The amount of times he’s told her it was just a fight with some asshole in a bar or something doesn’t need to stack up. 

Diamond’s hand slides around his waist, and he tries to squirm out of the way. She holds fast onto him, turns his face towards her own. Juno pushes, tries to get away, another knee-jerk reaction. “Di, stop it, c’mon.” he demands. He wants to put a wall between them. He wants his skin to be made of sandpaper so she never wants to touch him again. 

“It’s just a goodbye kiss before I go to work, geez.” She snaps, but lets go. 

Juno’s hand’s shake. Of course, he’s just overreacting. Still he feels tears fall from his eyes, as he tries to get as far from her as possible. He never wants her to touch him ever again. He never wants to be touched ever again. His breath is getting fast, too fast. 

_ Last night she had come home late. Later than she usually does. Juno has to pick up their pieces right now, though, or they’ll never get back to that happy that they come back to. Always gets Juno floating again. She kisses him, tells him she loves him, and Juno tries to push her away. That doesn’t work, as if it ever does. “Di, let’s just go to bed. It’s really late.” He doesn't want to. Though it’s not about wanting to with her. He’s never gotten anything he’s wanted and that’s not about to start now.  
_

_ “Juno.” she says, holding his leg so hard he can feel bruises start to form there. “Just shut the fuck up for once in your life.” That’s all he hears before she’s kissing him again, and he doesn’t have it in him to struggle anymore. _

He’s on the floor dry heaving over the toilet, bile and the pills he’d just taken not too long ago. Meanwhile Diamond is holding his hair back. He doesn’t know when he got on the floor or when she got so close. “Think you got too much to drink last night?”

Juno sits against the bathroom wall, shaking hard and tightening his arms around his chest. He looks up at her face above, and all he can think is that she looks terrifying above him. He’s terrified, because right then he can’t feel any love for her. He reaches to where it seemed so endless just yesterday. He wonders how long it’s been so distant. 

She still seems to be waiting for something. He hates himself for the way he just saw her. He stuffs whatever the hell that was in the ground, and takes a deep breath. 

“Yeah, I must’ve.”

**Author's Note:**

> this was a rough story! Get some water, take a breather if you need it. Take care of yourself always! I care about you and your mental health comes first!  
> also I have a twitter now! Follow me there @squidb1tch


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